RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Trou­bling sta­tis­tics gath­ered dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic show the Caribbean has a high­er than world av­er­age life­time preva­lence of in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence.

This was re­vealed by Dr Hal­imah DeShong, se­nior lec­tur­er In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Cave Hill cam­pus in Bar­ba­dos.

Speak­ing at a we­bi­nar ti­tled Coun­ter­act­ing the Scourge of Vi­o­lence Against Women in Caribbean So­ci­eties, Dr DeShong said da­ta shows that in some coun­tries, like T&T, Guyana, Suri­name and Bar­ba­dos, in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence re­mains wor­ri­some.

“Gen­der vi­o­lence is the most egre­gious man­i­fes­ta­tion of gen­der in­equal­i­ty. Women rad­i­calised as black are stereo­typed as be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced and con­struct­ed as fight­ing against their part­ners. Brown or In­di­an women are rad­i­calised as hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lence and in Latin Amer­i­ca, women al­so ex­pe­ri­ence cer­tain types of stereo­types when it re­lates to vi­o­lence,” she said.

Dr DeShong ex­plained that in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence sta­tis­tics in the Caribbean were high­er than the glob­al av­er­age, adding: “The glob­al av­er­age of life­time preva­lence of in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence stands at 1 in 3 or (33.3 per cent). In T&T, the av­er­age is 44 per cent, Ja­maica 39 per cent, Guyana 55 per cent and in Suri­name, it is 48 per cent.”

She not­ed that in places hit by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, there has been an in­crease in vi­o­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly against women.

Say­ing that stud­ies showed men as­sert­ed them­selves as pro­fi­cient in the use of vi­o­lence, Dr DeShong said: “When women en­gage in vi­o­lent acts, they are triv­i­alised by men as in­ef­fec­tive. Some men dis­tance them­selves from vi­o­lence when they are vi­o­lent. They jus­ti­fy vi­o­lence by say­ing women are dis­obe­di­ent. They en­gage in provo­ca­tion. Women and men ra­tio­nalise love and vi­o­lence as com­pat­i­ble.”

She al­so re­vealed that the es­ca­la­tion of vi­o­lence dur­ing COVID-19 was over 100 per cent in T&T.

“In Bar­ba­dos, we saw a 40 per cent in­crease. When we see an es­ca­la­tion of vi­o­lence in the wake of the earth­quake in Haiti, hur­ri­cane in Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, what we see was there are re­ports of shel­ter man­agers them­selves talk­ing about ex­pe­ri­enc­ing vi­o­lence. Their part­ners felt they had spent too much time in the shel­ters,” Dr DeShong re­vealed.

Mean­while, prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant of re­Think So­cial De­vel­op­ment Car­ol Wat­son-Williams said there was a need to pro­vide bet­ter sup­port sys­tems for re­searchers in­volved in doc­u­ment­ing gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“We had many in­stances where trainee in­ter­view­ers in Ja­maica could not con­tin­ue their work. The train­ing was trig­ger­ing to them and they faced dif­fi­cul­ties when lis­ten­ing to women who had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences like them. We need to pay more at­ten­tion to what in­ter­view­ers need, even in the re­cruit­ment and build sup­port for in­ter­view­ers more ful­ly,” she said.

Al­so speak­ing at the sem­i­nar was As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor at York Uni­ver­si­ty Dr Ruth Rod­ney, head of the Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment of the TT Po­lice Ser­vice, Snr Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, re­tired tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor Dr Hen­ri­ette Jansen and act­ing di­rec­tor of the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies Dr God­frey St Bernard.